Bordeaux 2002

It was Susie’s birthday so it seemed churlish not to take up the generous offer of fine wine merchant Bordeaux Index to taste some of the finest names in claret from the 2002 vintage.

This was a mixed vintage. A dismal summer was saved by a fine September – only those who put in the work and had due patience produced good wines.

The variability was clear in the wines. It’s difficult to generalise in such a heterogeneous vintage, but hallmarks seemed to be fresh acidity and firm tannic structures, without the opulent ripe fruit of more generous years (the fruit profiles here were generally red and tangy). Grainy finishes were evident in many wines – sometimes this went too far, into chewy dryness (Pauillac being particularly guilty of this over-extraction). Austerity might be an apt way to sum up this stylistic trait.

That said, the wines were showing nice evolution and maturity. Many need drinking up (with food). Only the very best showed the capacity to age much further.

The right bank fared pretty well, in our view, while left bank wines often suffered from over-extraction or flabbiness.

We didn’t agree on everything. As ever when we taste together, we like to publish both our scores, so you can get a full picture of both our takes on the wines. Our marks are annotated by taster (we didn’t both taste every wine).

One thing we did agree on was the fact that almost all of these wines were over-priced. We recognise that the pricing of top claret these days is governed just as much by investment forces as it is by other factors, but this usually has more relevance to top vintages rather than mediocre ones like this.

The end result tends to be perfectly decent wine but at an absurdly inflated price. Which can’t be good for the long-term future of Bordeaux.

TASTING NOTES

There were 59 wines in total at the tasting, representing all the major communes.

Prices are as quoted by Bordeaux Index based on current market valuations. All prices are per case in bond in the UK (so add another £20 then 20% VAT to these to get the full cost).

Bordeaux Index doesn’t necessarily have stock of all of these (many bottles were acquired just for this tasting). What they have can be found here.

Wines are listed in roughly descending order of preference (with some duds included at the end).

Château Latour 2002, Pauillac, 13% (£4,400) – Has a plummy upfront fruitiness the others don’t. Under which a meaty, savoury, tobacco-fuelled complexity emerges. Open-knit but also dense and powerful. Brawny. Opulent, in its way, for the vintage. Very elegant as well as powerful. Exciting stuff. Susie: 8.5/10, Peter: 9-9.5/10

Château Cheval Blanc 2002, St Emilion, 13.5% (£3,000) – very refined character here, packing in lots of flavour and structure but in a super elegant format. Limpid graphite and dark fruit aromas with an elegantly textured palate which is firm but fine and very persistent. Susie: 8/10, Peter: 9/10

Château Léoville Barton 2002, St Julien, 12.5% (£530) – initially reticent but the palate is dense, fine and still really young given the context. Stands out for its muscular density and youth. In this range, excellent value. Susie: 8/10, Peter: 7.5-8/10

Château Petrus 2002, Pomerol, 13.5% (£13,500) – what can you say? At this price, with this sort of iconic reputation, a wine is always going to struggle against expectations. That aside, this is just a disappointing wine, irrespective of price and reputation. It tastes baked and porty. Yes it’s fine textured, savoury and relatively complex, but it’s also comparatively short and graceless. Maybe we’re just cheap dates… Susie: 5/10, Peter: 7-6.5/10